torthúil explores
Saturday 10 August 2024
Lessons from an autobiography
Monday 29 July 2024
Quotations from Vacation
Sunday 28 July 2024
Very alternative lifestyles
Monday 22 July 2024
Just Maybe
Monday 8 July 2024
Flora
I created this doll for a silent auction last January. She did her job of parting people from their money and has gone to her forever home with one of my lovely classmates. I thoroughly enjoyed this project and had a bit of separation anxiety when she was done, so I knew I wanted to create another doll.
I changed the embroidery on the blouse to resemble the flower embroidery on our peasant blouses, and I added crocheted lace to the collar and cuffs. I kept the poppy headdress as it is so beautiful and iconic and makes the doll immediately identifiable as Ukrainian.
The skirt happens to naturally curl up in the back, offering a peak at the lace and resembling how our skirts would fly during our dance, which is perfect.
So, that’s my latest, and now I just have to figure a way to display her, which is still a conundrum. And last but not least, the name “Flora” was chosen by my eldest daughter.
Saturday 6 January 2024
2024 depth sounding
A “traditioned” life is not a static existence. Instead, it is something of a co-existence. The givenness of life is allowed. The mountains get a vote (or even a veto). There are many “mountains” in our lives – it is an ever-present feature of a material existence. Our planet is “traditioned” in a very unique position. That position (and much else that has been given us) make life possible. Very slight changes to that position would make life (certainly human life) impossible. At some point in our future, the ravages of an ice age will return (and there will be nothing we can do about it). —Fr. Stephen Freeman
...if God thinks and feels and speaks—if God has something like a ‘mind’—then maybe to be fully human means exercising our own mental functions, and not enfeebling them through excessive device use. Or, if God is face-to-face relationship as a Trinity, then our real center is not within us, but within the other—in our real relationships. And if God made the earth, plants, and animals, then maybe being human means staying physically close to these things.All that might sound very basic, yet in all these areas—mind, relationship, nature, embodiment—the ‘Machine’ competes against God, by framing every part of reality as a biological mechanism or a simulation, to be manipulated according to our caprice. I think this is where the real battle is—a battle to answer the question, “What is reality?”But this is not a question for Christians alone. It matters to all of us, and I think we need to wrestle with it in our families, our schools, even in our politics. We’ll come up with varying answers, but what matters is that we’re left with a robust moral awareness of the dark side of technology. Without that, the only thing left to wake us up will be suffering. --Peco Gaskovski
...if commitment comes with risks, the price of trying to avoid those risks is higher still. Committing to family life may be to risk abandonment. But the manosphere, and it female mirror-image ideology of Sex and the City liberal feminism, is a sterile, futile war not just on emotional risk but the inevitabilities that stand behind that risk: time, ageing, and death. The advice offered by these ideologies is far worse than risk-taking: to eschew all the long-term commitments that make life meaningful, in case the sight of your partner ageing normally reminds you of the passage of time. Grow old anyway, and leave no legacy of love to nourish the next generation. --Mary Harrington
This paragraph probably sums up the truth I would most like to pass on to my daughters. So many contemporary popular fictions (aka politics, belief systems, ideologies) have an unspoken assumption: namely, that one can (and should) live forever the way that one (might) live in one's twenties. From one perspective, this might look like personal autonomy, or even eternal youth. But it is a terribly brittle mindset, implying that the only good things in life are the things we choose and the things we control. Change and loss come for all of us, however. Things we cannot control, both welcome and unwelcome, happen to all of us. Just based on my experience, however, the things we do not control are sometimes the very things we need. It seems to me that the sane way to live is invest some time in figuring out what and who is important, stick with it/them, and not try to bulldoze every mountain that stands in the way.
A feast without a fast is a strange, half-finished thing: this is something I’ve only learned recently. We are coming up to the greatest annual feast of all, the one that most people, whether Christian or not, are going to end up celebrating. I’ve celebrated Christmas all my life, mostly with no religious trappings, and I’ve always loved it — more so since I became a father. But Christmas, in historical terms, is only one of a number of great feasts that make up the Christian ritual year, which was once — and still is in those parts of the world which continue to take it seriously — studded with saints days, festivals, processions, and feasts. --Paul Kingsnorth
- Technology use (reducing, altering, removing, replacing)
- Self-sufficient, minimalist practices
- Embodied & mental practices
- Children and family
- Spiritual and relational practices
Monday 18 December 2023
Photos of dancers, and other fragments
I spend a lot of time thinking about getting older these days.
I don't mean I have anything profound to say about it. Nor do I exactly sit down and dedicate time to thinking about getting older. Rather, as I go about my day, I find scenes from my past flitting across my memory. Something - an artifact, a photo, a phrase, a seen or remembered place - suddenly conjures up a memory. The content of the memories is not necessarily compelling, rather something of the atmosphere in which the memory was made.
For example, this year, as Christmas approaches, I often find myself remembering leaving my university after classes to go Christmas shopping. I would walk to the nearest mall, then ride the bus back after making my purchases. I remember watching the sunset through the windows of the bus. It is the ordinariness of the memory that makes it unforgettable.
Currently I'm re-reading (after a period of quite a few years) Jennifer Homans' Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet. The first time I read this book, I was pleasantly startled by the nostalgia I felt. It's the same reading it now. I was never a professional ballet dancer, or anything resembling one. And yet there is something so familiar about the people, the values, and especially the "scene" Homans describes. It brings to mind a kind of shabby-elite aesthetic. Daydreams lived out in bargain-renovated studios. The secret glamour of tulle and sequins hiding in a garment bag. When I was growing up dress-up clothes were in short supply. My daughters have had piles of floofy dresses from the time they were toddlers, but I only glimpsed such things occasionally. I wasn't even allowed to wear the tutu my mother made me except on parent viewing days. I have always associated the arts with genteel poverty. Musty rooms, scratched hardwood, lumpy linoleum, dusty curtains, old photographs on the walls. And yet there is nothing at all sad or pitiable about such memories. Maybe a kind of glorious sadness.
Today, I admit I don't try very hard to save money on my daughters' dance clothes because I crave the magical feeling of going to the dance store. When I was child, we would buy ballet shoes and uniforms at Classique Dancewear. They closed permanently a few years ago, hence my melancholy pleasure at typing out the full name. I clearly remember walking down the stairs to the store in the basement. Beautiful high-heeled ballroom shoes sparkled in glass cases. Mannequins modeled pancake tutus, the kind I knew I would never wear, because my mother could not get the tulle to stick out like that on my homemade tutus, no matter how hard she tried. And sequins, sequins in all colours sparkling everywhere. I never got to indulge in such frou-frou, however. My mother bought the Royal Ballet standard leotard and tights, and of course, new ballet slippers. The ballet slippers came (as they still do) in a flat cardboard box, one of many stacked on the shelf. I thought of this when I read (and viewed) the scene in Harry Potter where Harry buys his wand. The store where I shop for my daughters is welcoming, brightly lit, and very pink. Classique Dancewear on the other hand was Diagon Alley-meets-Moulin Rouge.
I fell in love with ballet after seeing a performance of Swan Lake. My first ballet classes were not at all like Swan Lake, however. They were in a run down, industrial part of the downtown. Maybe it was an artsy-fartsy, bohemian neighbourhood, but I didn't know what that was at the time. I just knew it was a bit scary to go to ballet. My mother would park near the railway station and then we would run across half a dozen railway lines to get to the studio, sometimes in front of an approaching train. I think we'd get arrested now for doing that. Later, maybe to avoid that maneuver, she would drop me off near the studio and I'd have to walk a block or two by myself downtown. I was coached in this and I affected an determined, severe look and manner so no questionable people would think of molesting me. (It worked, apparently).
My first ballet teacher was also a bit scary. I never even knew her name as a child, because we didn't use her name, we called her "Madame." She was old at the time, and most of the active teaching was done by younger women under her direction. But I do remember her once leading us at the barre, with a cigarette dangling from her red lips. She always smelled of cigarette smoke. At the end of class, we had to queue up and give her a hug and a kiss. I dreaded this because I had to smell her, but I wouldn't have dreamed of refusing. I just learned to hold my breath very discreetly. My father never learned to like or trust Madame. He detested her smoking habit as much as I did, and unlike me had no qualms about expressing said dislike. Most devastatingly, he forbade me from taking part in the school recital. I don't really know why, but it involved (of course) a lot of extra rehearsals and maybe he thought this offered Madame too many opportunities for instruction of a dubious nature. Madame was not happy, and on one occasion even tried to trick me into staying for rehearsal. To no avail. My stage debut would have to wait for more years and another teacher. But I was not entirely sad in the end, because I got to join a more advanced class and ended up ahead of all my same-age peers.
I was perusing Glenbow Museum's "Mavericks" exhibit some years ago, and to my amused surprise, immediately recognized "Madame" from one of the biographies. "Mavericks" may have itself been regulated to history, although there is still a website with a few working links. But thanks to the project I found out my ballet teacher's name: Regina Cheremeteff. And so I can search the internet for her part in history, and a little part of mine.
Her biography:
Regina Bickel, 1912-1992, was born in Berlin, Germany on March 25, 1912. She toured Europe as a child ballerina under the stage name Regina Royce. She also worked as the director of an Italian company. In 1930 she married Count Michael Cheremeteff, ca. 1900-1943, and worked in his equestrian troupe based in Berlin. They had three children, Christina (Olso), Alexandra (Madsen),1933-2002, and Dmitry. She settled in Calgary, Alberta in 1956 and established the Calgary Russian Ballet School, of which she was director, choreographer and teacher until its closing in 1989. She died in Calgary on March 5, 1992 at the age of 79. Alberta Record
YMCA Calgary backs up my memories:
Her students called her “Madame” over the 30-plus years that she trained young ballet dancers in Calgary from the 1950s to the late 80s. ...As a child ballerina Regina Cheremeteff toured Europe en pointe, surviving two world wars before immigrating to Canada and moving to Calgary in 1956, where she established the Calgary Russian Ballet School. Not above trading her tutu for a tool-belt, Regina remodeled her dance studio herself, knocking out walls and tearing up floors.
Allan Cozzubbo Academy of Dance notes:
In 1963 she opened her downtown location on 8th Ave. SW. The school closed in 1989. in 1930 she had married Count Michael Cheremeteff (1900=1943) and worked in his Equestrian Troupe in Berlin. Her three Children are Christine-Alexandra and Dmitry --he became a professional ballet dancer and was a guest at her recital.
Some additional digging, however, turned up an 1980 Calgary Herald story on Madame. I would recommend this for anyone who wants to know more about her than my few childhood memories can provide. I have retyped it to the best of my ability here, as the scanned article I found is unedited and mixed in with a hilariously dull article on Canadian constitutional politics. Incidentally however, both articles illustrate how much higher quality journalism was 40 odd years ago.
Perhaps most unnervingly, there is a gallery of photos in The University of Calgary's digital archives.
This picture is from 1986, and I'm pretty certain it depicts part of the performance that I was not allowed to participate in. If I had taken part in that recital, I could have been in this photo or a similar one. That's just freaky. Since about 2000, I have gotten used to brilliant colour digital photos that never age. By contrast, this picture and the others in the gallery look absurdly old.
Maybe my favourite photo is this one, however:
I clipped this photo for the sake of the young woman kneeling right in front:
"Pavlova was the most famous, but there were dozens of Russians like her: they toured America in various Ballet Russes spin-off troups between the wars (some carried on into the 60s) introducing - and converting - several generations of audiences to classical dance. (page 450) ...... "When they were too old or tired to perform, many of those dancers opened schools: they fanned out and set down roots in cities and towns across the country. .... Performance by performance, class by class, over many years, these itinerant Russians passed on their tradition. Not only steps and techniques: they brought to their lessons the entire Imperial orthodoxy of Russian ballet, and it was in their sweaty encounters with students that the long process of transplanting ballet to American minds and bodies began. (451)